Standardisation is an important factor to pave the way onto the market for new and innovative robotic products and to foster market growth. While safety standards form the basis to establish a robotic product on the market, other standards can help to dismantle trade barriers. Standards on terminology and coordinate systems as well as ontologies improve communication between manufacturers, suppliers and end users and are first steps towards exchangeable robot components. In a few years, more standards on robot modularity can be expected that will help making robot systems modular and highly interchangeable. Further initiatives have started to create standards for benchmarking robot performance, making complex robot abilities measurable with the goal to increase market transparency.
Read about the recent developments in robot standardisation with a focus on ISO activities in the Standardisation Newsletter 10 (August 2016).